PS I'm fine. Things are fine. We're all fine. Well, Edward has pneumonia but thanks to the discovery of antibiotics he, too, is mostly fine. We went to Canada. We went to Canada and stayed for quite a long time; long enough for the Canadians to get sick of us and for me to decide whether I want to go with a southern Ontario accent this winter or something more Island ('See yehz' is my new goodbye.) The entire family says washroom and we immediately apologize when someone bumps into us.

Here's a story for you:

About a week or two into our stay on Prince Edward Island we stopped for gas and I went inside to pay. While I waited I eyed the bags of Anne of Green Gables lobster-flavored potato chips (true. I swear that is true) and suddenly my attention was caught by a bottle of amber colored fluid. I was intrigued. 'Pepsi Gingembre' read the label and I said it aloud, all quebecois, Peepsee Gingembrrrrrrrrrre.

"Gas and this, please," I said thumping down the bottle.

The nice young man looked at the gingerpepsi. He cleared his throat.

"Have you, uh, had that before?" he asked.

"No," I said, "but I must. Why, is it totally disgusting?"

He cleared his throat again, "Let's just say I've never had a repeat customer."

"Ha!" I said, "You've just had the wrong customers. Ginger! Cola! Together! It's so obvious I'm surprised no one has thought of it before."

"I really don't think you should buy it."

"Nonsense! I'm sure it's delicious."

"Well, OK," he said, "Good luck. See yehz later."

"See yehz later," I replied. "When I come back to buy more Ginger Pepsi."

The next day I was somewhere trying to buy something when I discovered that I had misplaced my credit card. Hell, I thought, what an incredible nuisance and proceeded to mentally backtrack until I realized that I must have left my card with the gas station cashier when I walked off with the Pepsi.

How. Embarrassing.

I called them and said, I think you might have my credit card? And the person who answered said, blue card, your name is Julia, silver car, came in yesterday? yes, yes we do.

So I drove back to the station and when I walked in I was relieved to see a completely different person behind the counter. There is something shameful about being a doofus and doubly shameful about then having to face a witness to your doofusdom.

When I got up to the front of the line I leaned forward and rather furtively said, you, ah, have a credit card of mine?

The guy grinned.

"Yep! We do." he said. "And how was the Ginger Pepsi?"

I gaped.

"How?" I asked. "What?" I said.

"He's my brother. He told me he tried to talk you out of it and he wasn't surprised you go around leaving your credit card all over the place. You know, because, Ginger Pepsi."

Well!

There you go.

I hung my head and for a moment I thought about lying, but one can't really lie in Canada; not with the beneficent presence of Justin Trudeau hovering everywhere like a gentle golden glow.

So I confessed: "The Ginger Pepsi was quite literally the most revolting thing I've ever drunk in my life and I once made myself sick on Southern Comfort. Absolutely foul. The worst thing ever. I was wrong. Utterly wrong. Please tell your brother I should have listened to him and if he ever gives me soft drink advice in the future I promise I will listen to it."

He handed me back my card, "So you're not going to want the cases we set aside for you? Pretty good deal."

"Guk," I said firmly. "See yeh."

"Yeah see yeh," and I could hear him laughing at me and with me all the way back to my car.

A couple of weeks ago Caroline rather breathlessly announced that she and her friend K were going to start a band.

"I'm going to be the singer."

"Fun."

"And he's the drummer." (Of course he is. Aren't they always?)

"Great," I said.

After a pause that stretched on while Caroline stood there, blinking at me, I asked, "And?"

"Well the thing is... and you should know, you should know that we're going to do a lot of Scottish songs, so you'll like that... ."

"Aye."

"Well, could you loan me the money so I can buy him a drum set?"

Short answer - no.

Longer answer - from now until the end of days, the answer to the question "Mom, could you loan me money so that I can buy [person] a drum set?" is always going to be no. Always.

Anyway, the boy's birthday party is this weekend and she agreed that a Pokemon gift pack would be an appropriate present without even mentioning bongos, so I suspect that the band might be breaking up. Probably for the best.

+

Allow me to give you a piece of unsolicited advice. If you ever succumb to your daughter's year-long campaign to get a bird just go ahead and get two. Because you will INEVITABLY wind up with two.

Crivens and his new best friend, Waily.

Honestly, I couldn't stand it. Caroline would go to school and Crivens would just... sit there. He wouldn't chirp. He wouldn't play. He just stared into space and looked as if he was thinking about the bell jar. It was so depressing. So one day I went to the pet store and got a small quarantine cage and... another bird.

Patrick doesn't care for the parakeets. In fact, when a section of his back reddened during recent allergy testing, Patrick said, "Which one is it? Is it birds? Oh god please say it's birds." It wasn't birds. And it wasn't an actual reaction. Patrick has no allergies. He might have some immune issues but we're still looking into that and, besides, that's another story.]

and now we are a two bird family.

They play. They groom each other. Waily taught Crivens how to use the swing; Crivens taught Waily that I'm not trying to poison them when I feed them lettuce. It's all very jolly and while it is true that they NEVER SHUT UP OH MY GOD THE SCREECHING I think our house is the better for having them.

That said, I still wish she had agreed to a damned guinea pig. I hear guinea pigs are quiet.

Oh! Speaking of which, just this week Caroline came home and told me that her friend Y's guinea pigs died on Monday.

"Oh how sad," I said. Then, "Wait. What? Both of them?"

"Yes," said Caroline as she reached for the black crayon and started a condolence card.

"Both of Y's guinea pigs died yesterday morning? At the same time?"

"Yes."

"Oh," I repeated. "How sad."

Now, I know I've been listening to a lot of Agatha Christie lately, but doesn't it seem highly irregular to you that two guinea pigs dropped dead on the same day? I suspect foul play.

+

Audiobooks! I knew there was something I have been meaning to talk to you about.

The children and I just finished the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place. At least, we finished as many as we could because there is still one unpublished book left. I hate it when I do that. I try to only get series (serieses?) that are completed but this time I failed and it is especially annoying because nothing, ever, gets resolved or answered in the first five books. It became a running joke with us: the book would end and we'd all look at each other and say, "Hold on. It's over? But what about mysteries one through twenty? Who are Penny's parents? Why were the children left in the woods? What's the deal with the room in the attic? How will Bertha the ostrich get back to Africa? SIBERIA?????" And so on.

That said, it is a charming series and wonderfully narrated. I'd recommend for grade school kids, although Patrick and I were able to enjoy it because it is very well-written and witty. Her ability to work with leit motif is unparalleled.

Right now we are about to finish London Eye Mystery, which I picked up as something to tide us over between series. It's... ok. I dislike the narrator and found his attempt to convey Asperger's by being sorta... gummy-mouthed borderline offensive. We have about half an hour left so it's possible it all comes together in a brilliant kaleidoscope of plot, but at this point I'm not holding my breath. There is so much to be resolved and so little time left that Patrick and I are worried that the ending can only be either banal (mystery solved and it's all ok, folks!) or tragic (oh dear, a corpse.) I'll let you know.

I'm trying to decide on our next series and would welcome suggestions. We have another massive road trip coming up (what can I say, I love Canada) and we need something really good. I am contemplating the Lockwood & Co books but would like to know: 1) if the series is finished and 2) if it might be too dark for the twins. Or me. Hunger Games killed me and I wasn't too happy by the end of Bartimaeus either.

What about Eragon? Worth it?

Please advise.

Updated to add: Ohhhhhhh! She DID manage to wrap up the London Eye Mystery after all. I stand corrected.

Some time last week - or maybe it was the week before - I read an article on procrastination in the Washington Post which in turn lead me to this post from the Wait but Why site (whose subtitle by the way is: new post every sometimes; which I am totally going to homage) and despite the fact that I initially just skimmed the cartoons, I could not have been more struck by it if it had been holy writ. Seriously. It was as if I had just been putting the finishing touches on a sign for Ye Olde Gomorrah Cupcakery (So Good They're Sinful) when someone handed me a stack of stone tablets detailing the lure of the Instant Gratification Monkey and the pitfalls of the Dark Playground and I fell to my knees, chastened and gobsmacked.

[I'll give you a minute to go read the posts, or at least look at all the cartoons.

Finished? Heh. Panic Monster.]

Anyway.

It. Was. All. So. True.

It's not that I don't want to write. I do. I like writing. And I particularly like writing to you. But somehow - hand to my heart - I sat down to type a sprightly 850 words last week only to spend three hours reading wikipedia entries on the children of George III after I wasted most of an afternoon poking around the life of the Marquis de Lafayette; who in turn had only come up because it crossed my mind that it might be a good idea to research and then compose a musical based upon the life of Aaron Burr (but I guess this has sort of been done already?) As much as I enjoy writing, I apparently enjoy the immediate gratification of chewing on my thumb while pondering the many miseries of long dead English royals even more.

So every day I wake up with the best creative intentions and every day my spiral into the numbing void of clickbait articles is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread. Or, as Homer admitted after he ate an entire pan of brownies: I'm feeling a lot of shame right now.

But, you know, the book of a thousand pages starts with a single letter et cetera.

So, hi, how are you?

I'm fine except my thumb has been acting up a bit and my dentist has asked to see me again in two weeks while hinting darkly at a root canal. The internet says a root canal is actually a good thing because it takes the pain away but the internet says a lot of stupid things.

Caroline wound up doing her science project on sugar crystals, mostly because Patrick finally said: enough - all of your ideas are going to get you suspended if not expelled; so just make rock candy and be done with it. We spend a lot of time reminding Patrick that he's also a punk kid and not in a position of any authority whatsoever over the twins but I have to admit he had a point.

When Edward was evaluated in December the neuropyschologist diagnosed him with dysgraphia and ADHD (heavy on the A; zero H.) The dysgraphia made complete sense to us but I was a little, meh, shrug, maybe, on the idea of an attention disorder. I mean, sure, if you tell Edward to go upstairs, get his pajamas and then come back downstairs for a bath it is possible he might actually go upstairs; but you can forget about the pajamas (he would) and he is just as likely to wind up on the porch in his snowpants playing badminton. But in our house this is normal. Sure we have our freak outlier in the form of Caroline who always knows exactly what is going on and where and why but the rest of us? There is myself (see above re. descendants of the wee bit German lairdie) and Steve who snaps "You know I'll never remember this! Text me!" when I ask him to get a tomato AND an onion when he calls me from the produce section of the grocery store. As for Patrick... well I suspect Patrick is perfectly capable of doing X Y and then Z when asked and in order, but we'll never know because in his heart Patrick is a born subversive.

[Case in point: Patrick recently came up with the idea of a comfort tuba and suggested that I send a note to his school asking that he be allowed to play the tuba - HE DOES NOT ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE TUBA - as a stress reliever following exams.

"I'll play very quietly," he assured me, "since other kids might still be working on their tests."

And don't even get me started on his imaginary exchange student, Oslo.]

Where was I?

Oh right. Edward. Attention issues. Question mark.

So the neuropsych put the ADHD in her report and I said, well, sure, ok, whatever but told the school that I was skeptical. His teacher - now that I think about it - looked at me with gentle pity and when it came up again during his IEP meeting the school psychologist shared the following story.

While she was administering a test to Edward he asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. She said, of course. When ten minutes elapsed and he failed to return to her room she went to look for him. After first checking the hall and the bathroom, she went to Edward's classroom where she found him at his desk working on a project. Apparently he had gone to the bathroom and then forgotten all about the testing. Finding himself outside a bathroom in a different part of the school with no idea how he had gotten there, he must've blinked a few times and then gone to locate his teacher.

Every time I think about it I laugh. While being tested for attention issues... he forgot he was being tested for attention issues. One can only assume that his Instant Gratification Monkey was at the wheel.

[There is another new post below this one - I decided to separate them because... honestly because I didn't like the arc. What can I say.]

"Mom!" Caroline said as she got into the car yesterday, "We're having a science fair!"

!

I realize that reasonable people can disagree but as far as I am concerned this is the worst sentence in the English language.

"Are you sure?" I asked in much the same way one might say 'And the doctor really said it was ringworm?'

"Absolutely!" Then she added, "We have a packet" and proceeded to try to shove a sheaf of paper the size of a phone book into my lap.

"Science fair, eh?" Edward said as if this was the first he had heard of it and I wondered, briefly, where he had left his enormous packet.

"Hmmmmmmm... ," he said and then somewhere between the school parking lot and my first turn onto a main road he had decided that he was going to investigate the possibility of twin telepathy, formulated his hypothesis, established his test and control groups, and explained the framework for his proposed research which would involve flashcards and a clipboard upon which he could record results.

I relaxed a bit. Well, I thought, this isn't going to be so...

"I have two great ideas," Caroline announced "but I think I am going to go with the first one."

"Terrific!"

"I am going to look into which type of glass shatters most easily when you hit it with an arrow."

"Uh... ."

"So I'll need to set up giant pieces of different kinds of glass in the front yard and then... ."

I stopped her right there. "No," I said. "Next idea," I said.

She was annoyed but continued.

"OKKKKKKKKK, my next idea is to see whether people who usually have a hard time falling asleep take longer to get knocked out when they are hit by a tranquilizer gun."

!!!!!

Patrick choked.

"Ah yes," he said "the human experimentation division of the second grade science fair. Very popular."

"Caroline," I said, "those are both very interesting questions and I love your thinking but I don't believe that either idea is practical right now. Why don't we look up project ideas when we get home and see what else appeals to you."

"No, no!" said Patrick. "I think she should go around shooting people with tranquilizer darts and then ask them when they come to whether they consider themselves in general to be insomniacs. "

She kicked the back of his seat and then spent the rest of the drive home glaring moodily out the window. Scientists, like artists, are often not fully appreciated in their own time.

During an especially tense game of Catan I recently begged Edward to trade me a grain card and - upon his cold refusal - wheedled, "Surely with all those cards in your hand you can spare a small quantity of grain for a poor widow like myself?"

"Ha!" he said. "You're not a widow! You're a civilized house lady of the modern age" (later in that same game he opened trade negotiations with Steve by saying, "I need ore and I know you have it. You! Yes, you with the pretty hair!" - Edward was on a roll.)

Anyway.

Yesterday as I was signing off on the Your Child Qualifies For An IEP documents that precede the Now What meeting I saw that it had spaces for name, date, signature and title; so under the latter I wrote, "House Lady, civilized." But I wrote it really small and messy so they won't know that I think I'm funny.

Speaking of really small and messy, a number of you asked about dysgraphia and I wish I knew more because I try to be helpful when I can and shared experience is important.

So, for what little it is worth, my new to the scene layparent's explanation goes like this: dysgraphia (similar to dyslexia with reading and dyscalculia with numbers) is a neurological disorder that prevents the brain from properly managing the tasks associated with writing. It's not just sloppy handwriting or flipped letter formation (b for d, capitals for lowercase, vice and versa - although you get that in spades) but a disconnect in the elaborate mental processes that go into formulating an idea, translating that idea into words, and then breaking those words back into letters before physically reproducing them on paper or vellum or a cocktail napkin or whatever comes to hand.

The neuropsychologist Edward saw in December said, for example, that for a dysgraphic person the act of trying to copy notes from a board is "excruciating" not just because it is difficult to form letters properly, but because of all the steps involved in looking at the board, reading the material, synthesizing it, returning attention back to the paper, forming the words ... frizzle!

Edward himself gave me even better insight when we sat at the table recently and I alternately cajoled and bullied him into using words longer than three letters on a homework assignment. He asked if I was able to write with my feet and when I said I had no idea as I had never tried to do so; he told me to try it.

So we abandoned his worksheet and got a piece of paper and I proceeded to try to write my name holding a marker between my big and second toes while pinning the paper down with my other foot.

Good. Grief. Talk about excruciating.

It turns out I can do it. Sort of. And it looked like my first name. Sort of.

Edward and I surveyed my work and I said, "Wow. That was really hard."

Edward said, "Yeah and it looks terrible."

"True."

Then he said, "Ok! Now use your foot to finish my worksheet and don't forget to use words like arthropod rather than bug."

When I spoke to my mother this morning I informed her that I was in the process of driving home my new fish.

There was a pause. Then she said, "Am I to take it that you've suffered a bereavement?"

Ah. Ah yes. Sorry. Forgot that part. A moment of contemplation, please, for Skye the ex-Betta. He was a good fish, as fish go, and as fish go... he went as slowly as was piscatorially possible. Seriously. When was it that I first mentioned the fact that Skye had taken to floating topside and I was looking into ways to end his suffering? You know, when I *WINK WINK* told Steve I wanted to euthanize the fish? December?

Do you know how disconcerting it is to have a fish who hangs out upside-down at the waterline? Very. I cannot tell you how many times I glanced at his tank, tsk'd in sorrowful acceptance of life's great circle before poking at his lifeless corpse... only to have him twist away and frisk off again. Not to mention the fact that he needed to be fed by hand. For months.

I know the term Blessed Release is thrown around a lot - mainly by people in nineteenth century novels who have just come into an inheritance - but it is hard to overemphasize just how very blessed this release was. Very.

Still, when I determined yesterday morning that this time Skye was really (really and truly and utterly) dead I felt sad.

"Oh. Oh dear." I announced to the house at large, "Skye is dead."

"Shrug!" hollered Edward from the other room.

"How can you tell?" called down Patrick.

"Finally!" sympathized my husband.

Only Caroline bothered to join me by the aquarium. She looked at Skye in silence and then put her hand on my arm.

"Can I bury him in the yard right now?" she asked with an enthusiasm I found to be in poor taste.

"Sure."

"Great!" she said and skipped off to find a box.

So I was recounting all of this to my mother and emphasized my general sense of relief that Skye had been mercifully released from this tank of tears by explaining that as recently as Saturday I was googling painless ways kill fish.

My mom laughed and said that it was nice to know I am so compassionate since I will no doubt be tending to her declining years as well. "I'm glad you put painless in there," she said.

"Of course," I said. Then I added, "I was leaning toward a combination of clove oil and vodka, by the way."

There was another pause and then she said, "I could do worse."

I love my mom.

This my new fish. I have named him... Cherry.

And speaking of football (heh heh. sly) I would like to reiterate for the Official World Wide Internet Record that I divorced Chelsea before Diego Costa got all... what WAS that? The pushy shove-y nuzzling bitey FA Cup hug violation? I didn't think he needed a red card so much as a psychiatrist.

On that note I have more recorded football to watch, not to mention an entire season of college basketball upon which I must educate myself. Go... Huskies? Did they make it? Does anyone have five seconds to tell me who's good this year?

PS My subconscious has apparently been working on the question of vodka and clove because I just said ah ha! and discovered that while I was typing this the rest of me was rounding out an imaginary cocktail with orange and maybe red wine. A sort of winter sangria.

In addition to being rather sporty, it is significantly smaller than the other one; so not only can I now move the top joint of my thumb (which I am doing as we speak space bar space bar space bar) but also my wrist (crucial in the event of sudden badminton.) On the minus side I am no longer walking around as the poster child for emergency falconry preparedness. Quel, as the French say, dommage.

[I self-diagnosed turf thumb, by the way, and think that I must've landed on it funny during one of my eleventy million falls during soccer - probably that time the other guy got the yellow card; note the pride in my voice because it means that *I* had gotten to the ball first ... before he cowped me. The orthopedist said the swelling was caused by ligament damage but my real issue is the arthritis in that joint. Who knew? Anyway. Cortisone and a brace and I'm practically out of the bandbox.

And I am officially retired from soccer. Again.]

Speaking of soccer, Patrick pointed out that my brace is Chelsea blue; an incredibly awkward observation since he knows that Chelsea and I have consciously uncoupled. Sorry. I meant to break it to you more gently but there it is. We'd been growing apart for some time (what with the unavoidable fact that they are all, more or less, a bunch of dicks) but it wasn't until I leapt to my feet with a squeal of joy when someone - Southhampton? - scored against them that I realized that it was really, truly over. Like an ill-advised first marriage I had rushed in too quickly; smitten with the idea of being smitten.

Since November I've been seeing... well, seeing someone new and although it is too soon to be sure I think this time my fandom will be forever. There is a sweetness to this new team. A touching vulnerability. A refreshing lack of Diego Costa that is leaving me heady and a little breathless. It's also possible they're going to get relegated, at which point I'm screwed because America has come a long way in their football broadcasts but not all the way down to the championship league.

What else?

Patrick is officially an inch taller than I am. It's weird. I'm not going to lie to you. You have this baby and you love them and feed them and smile indulgently when they talk about fonts and then they are taller than you are.

Caroline continues to love Crivens with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

Edward - wow, it has been a while, hasn't it - Edward was diagnosed with dysgraphia... oh! An enormous and heartfelt thank you to those of you who weighed in on the subject last Fall and encouraged me to take Edward to a neuropsychologist. Getting the neuropsych eval through our health insurance company was a lengthy exercise in You-Must-Be-Joking bureaucracy (at one point we were told that they would pay for it but only if the evaluation found issues beyond learning disabilities - chicken meet egg) but it was worth it. She identified a few things that would benefit from additional classroom support and we were able to use her report as a starting point with the school.

Ha! Sorry. That reminds me. This came home last week and I admit that I giggled.

And on that mature and erudite note I bid you goodnight and swear upon the altar of salt I will check in again much sooner.

After taking January off to spend more time with my football I was ready to return to the internet today refreshed, revitalized, reinvigorated...

when my doctor decided this morning that the best way to treat my swollen-like-a-cocktail-tomato thumb joint is to immobilize it. And no, we have no idea why my thumb ballooned but it's been like this for three weeks and it hurts like a beejeezums when I button or squeeze or do the thing you do with the elastic when you are putting your hair back into a ponytail.

Caroline and Edward turned eight. Let us all take a moment to ponder this because... WHAT? Eight?

The Sad

Jamy died early on the 26th. It was a good death. Very peaceful. We had made her a bed of towels on the heated bathroom floor and gave her water from a medicine dropper and she just grew weaker and weaker throughout Christmas Day. Steve woke up and stroked her back around four the next morning and by seven she had died. It was painless. She had a good - albeit weirdly isolated - and a long life. But I am crying as I write this because I keep seeing her out of the corner of my eye in the closet and then I remember - oh.

And then she went back to researching birds and bird care. She lectured endlessly about cockatiels, conures, canaries and parrots. She read aloud to the family from the Sibley's Guide, rather pointedly dwelling on the subject of smaller tropical birds that have been domesticated in the past centuries.

She said things like, "Oh! Can I have that empty egg carton? I just read about a bird toy that you can make with one."

"You don't have a bird, Caroline."

"I know."

"We are not getting a bird, Caroline."

"I know."

Her magnum opus - produced this September - was a fifteen page, closely written, stapled booklet entitled "A Helpful Guide to Parakeet Care" with each letter on the cover carefully bubbled in a different color. Chapter two was about handling. Chapter three involved feeding. She was positive. She was informative. She was relentless. She stayed just this side of obnoxious. She never stopped talking about getting a bird.

In early December I said to Steve, "Do you want a bird?"

"No!"

"Have you ever wanted a bird?"

"Of course not!"

I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, "I think we have to buy her a bird" and Steve said, "Yeah. I know."

So this was Christmas morning

and this was tonight

His name is Crivens.

The Year

Obviously it was my intention to write here every day in 2015 and equally obviously I failed. I feel a little squicky about my lack of resolve. Like the time I - technically - ran a 5K but as soon as I crossed the finish line I collapsed on the verge, didn't notice I was sitting in a puddle and when I did notice I didn't care. How triumphant can anyone feel when they are sitting in a puddle?

The broader question, though, was whether I am capable of committing to writing on a daily basis in any sort of meaningful (oh shush, you know what I mean) way and I think I am. Mostly. Mostly enough. So my goal for 2016 is essays. Enough essays to put into, well, a notebook maybe. Or a folder. That sort of thing. And to write here, of course, on a mostly regular basis because I love you singularly and I love you even more together and I honestly cannot imagine a life without your wisdom and your generosity.

From the bottom of my abnormally wide feet I thank you for every laugh and every thought provoked and every observation, suggestion, recommendation... every kindness; and I wish you the very best of all good things in the coming year.